Over the past few years of working on DeFi projects, we've been tortured by oracle fees. Our medium-sized protocol only earns two or three thousand USD per month, but just data update costs us 8,000 USD. At that time, I kept thinking, this isn't using oracles at all, it's just throwing money in.

The most heartbreaking part is Chainlink's push mechanism. Its logic is very hardcore — regardless of whether your project needs data at the moment, the system will push information to the chain at scheduled times, and gas fees are charged without fail. On days when the market is stable, I watch those unchanged prices being recorded over and over again, thinking about how much money is being wasted.

Three months ago, I decided to try switching the oracle to another pull-based mechanism. The biggest advantage of this solution is very obvious — you only call for data when you truly need it, and don't do anything if you don't. After this change, we directly cut our oracle costs by over 60%. To put it in numbers, the money saved in three months is enough to hire a full-time developer again.

Honestly, this kind of switch isn't a joke; it involves rewriting core code, testing, deployment, and a series of processes. But when the benefits truly start to show, that feeling... the entire team's enthusiasm skyrocketed. Not only did the financial pressure ease, but more development resources could be invested into the protocol's feature iterations.

Looking back now, the key isn't how powerful a particular oracle solution is, but finding the tool that best fits your project's current stage. For small teams, cost efficiency can sometimes be more important than reputation.